Goethe’s letters: “This collective being that bears the name Goethe”

Frieder von Ammon, Chair Professor of Modern German Literature at LMU, is one of the editors-in-chief of the historical-critical edition of Goethe’s letters. A new volume has just appeared.

Enlarge

More than 15,000 letters written by Goethe have survived. Is this abundance an exception, or are there other authors whose surviving correspondence has such dimensions?

Frieder von Ammon: Goethe is an extraordinary letter writer in every respect. For one thing, there is the huge number of surviving letters he wrote, addressed to a vast array of recipients – some 1,400 people. Even greater, however, is the number of letters sent to him – over 20,000 from about 3,500 people. Everybody who is anybody contacts him, and in many cases he answers.

However, the abundance is not only quantitative, but qualitative too: Goethe’s correspondence is richly varied especially with regard to the topics he addresses and the language he uses, which is endlessly copious. You could stake out the expressive scope of the German language in around 1800 from Goethe’s letters alone.

From the most intimate love letter to official letters

What are the letters about?

The spectrum is unbelievably broad: They range from the most intimate love letter, in which Goethe presents himself in a completely unguarded fashion, to official letters from his work life, in which he virtually disappears as a person behind the carapace of the sentence structures. The letters are about literature, naturally enough, but also about science, art, music, contemporary events, and last but not least, practical everyday matters like ordering books, wine, and sausages. There are tender letters to his wife, highly diplomatic exchanges with dukes, and sophisticated correspondence with scientists, fellow authors, composers, and artists.

This corpus of letters is an entire cosmos, and anyone who spends time in it comes away with a fuller picture of Goethe than if they read Goethe’s literary work alone. But it’s no less appealing and fruitful to flip the perspective: Then you can observe a large portion of the European intellectual world in the seven exciting and consequential decades between the 1760s and the 1830s. As such, Goethe’s letters are also a first-rate source of cultural history.

Goethe carefully prepared his literary estate himself. Did he not protect himself and hold back the most personal letters?

There are cases where he destroyed letters because he didn’t want them seen by posterity – in 1770, for example, before his departure for Strasbourg. Goethe began to see himself as a historical figure from an early stage. Accordingly, he soon became conscious of the value of his letters as historical documents. That’s why he began himself to archive and systematize them – also with the idea of reusing them, such as when working on his autobiography Truth and Poetry.

For future researchers, this was a stroke of luck. Normally, a lot of material is lost. With Goethe, it was different, partly on account of his prominent position in Weimar. He had clerks, a secretary; it was akin to an office where letters are professionally written, sent, and archived. Members of his family would also sometimes help, especially his son August.

How old was Goethe when he started seeing himself as a historical figure?

It began really quite early. After all, he was the most famous poet in the German language – and was perceived as such from very early on. When The Sorrows of Young Werther became an international success, Goethe was 25 years old. So he became the leading voice of his generation as a very young man and subsequently shaped German literature in many ways. When this is so, an author will naturally be quicker to realize that everything he writes will be of interest to posterity one day. On top of this, he possessed a great deal of self-assurance since childhood.

And also a certain amount of self-dramatization, which he expressed in his letters?

Definitely. The interesting thing here is that these self-stylings were incredibly varied. When you read the letters in chronological order, you get the impression you’re encountering very different people. This is partly because Goethe often adapts his style to the recipients of his letters, as he tended to picture them as interlocutors standing before him.

What if his letters did not exist?

Goethe’s literary work is large and important enough for him to become and remain a classic author. But the letters also often have a literary character such that they could be seen as forming part of his oeuvre – such as his correspondence with Schiller, which he himself published during his lifetime. Goethe’s letters, even official ones, are often so brilliantly formulated that the boundaries between a letter as a functional text and a literary artifact become fluid.

Accordingly, if the letters had not survived, we would not only be missing all kinds of biographical and other information, but also a substantial part of his work. That would be an extremely painful gap.

Endless variations on: “I love you. I need you. I want to be close to you.”

Enlarge

What have you learned from these letters?

Ways of communicating love, for example. The latest volumes to have appeared come from the high point of his romantic relationship with Charlotte von Stein. Three-quarters of all the letters from this period – over 700 in total – are addressed to her. They are hugely varied in form. Often they’re just little messages – two, three lines – that a messenger delivered, sometimes along with strawberries or flowers, or perhaps a freshly created poem.

They are endless variations on: “I love you. I need you. I want to be close to you.” These are emotional experiences that everybody can relate to. But very few people are able to express them in such variety. We can learn a lot from them.

His writing plays a major role in his letters

So he also wrote spontaneously. And didn’t just dictate with an eye to posterity?

There are different phases. The young Goethe certainly did not always think of posterity. But, it seems to me, Goethe almost always did so after his trip to Italy – that is, during the Weimar Classicism phase. In this period, he collaborated closely with Schiller, and the two of them write each other letters almost daily, even though they are neighbors after Schiller moved to Weimar. And then for the old Goethe, his own historicity had become self-evident.

What do the letters say about his view of his own writing?

His writing plays a major role in his letters. When he corresponds with Schiller, for example, we get to know an author who is figuring things out and seeking clarity about his poetological premises and their theoretical foundations. But when as a young man, he writes passionately from his own experience, then it’s far removed from such rational control over his own writing. In the letters, then, we encounter many different Goethes – partly a consequence of him living to a ripe old age and still writing letters until shortly before his death. The final letter, to Wilhelm von Humboldt, a moving document, was penned just five days before he died.

Enlarge

But he didn’t devote himself solely to writing …

No. In fact, his research in various scientific fields predominates over long periods, including in his letters. He corresponded with scholars throughout Europe. The theory of colors was one of his major concerns. But he also often writes about his collections – of minerals, for example – or about court, theater, or university matters.

While working on a piece of literature, did he also correspond about it?

This was sometimes the case and it is quite pronounced in his correspondence with Schiller. He listens to Schiller’s advice and takes his criticism on board. But that is more of an exception, as he lets few people get that close to him and can communicate with few people as equals in this way.

Can you tell from the letters whether this exchange was important for his writing?

Yes, absolutely. It’s unambiguously the case. Without the correspondence with Schiller, or with the composer Carl Friedrich Zelter, who after Schiller’s death became one of his most important correspondents, various things in Goethe’s works would probably have evolved in a different direction. Schiller, for example, is the one who repeatedly reminds Goethe to keep working on Faust – “You wanted to get back to work on Faust …” “Don’t forget Faust”– because he recognized the greatness of the work that was in progress.

If the letters, and thus the social environment, were so important for Goethe’s work, does that perhaps relativize the classic image of a lone genius?

Yes. There’s a famous passage where the old Goethe says (the original is in French): “So, what have I done? […] My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.” He was conscious that a whole group of people had contributed to his work.

That is a conception of authorship that was diametrically opposed to the cult of genius he had espoused as a young man – and let’s not forget that he was long considered the literary genius of German literature. The contribution of the collective was made in no small part in the form of letters. From the letters he sent and received, you can thus, at least to some extent, grasp this collective being that bears the name Goethe.

Historical-critical edition of Goethe’s letters

As one of the editors-in-chief of the historical-critical edition of Goethe’s letters, Professor Frieder von Ammon collaborates with a team at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar, “a collective of highly qualified scholars,” as von Ammon emphasizes. The historical-critical edition of Goethe’s letters is part of the project Propyläen, which foresees the print and digital publication of all Goethe’s biographical sources together with detailed scholarly annotations. In addition to the diaries and the letters by and to Goethe, this includes his encounters and conversations. “Once completed, this will be one of the richest research resources not just for Goethe, but also for the entire Goethe era,” explains Frieder von Ammon.

The latest volume of the complete letters, which will encompass 38 volumes when complete, contains letters with scholarly annotations from the years 1782 to 1784. “It’s the phase in which Goethe is increasingly involved in politics in Weimar, something that’s not always to his liking. His various activities frequently have precious little to do with literature. You notice how he struggles to strike a balance between his role as an author and as a politician. For this balance, his relationship with Charlotte von Stein is hugely important,” says Frieder von Ammon.